<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>


Is Pizza Hut's New All-Gluten-Free Pizza Healthy or All Hype?


 


The nation's leading pizza chain tries to capitalize on our collective
confusion over the protein that allows breads to rise.


 


January 15, 2015 By  <http://www.takepart.com/author/jason-best> Jason Best

 

Jason Best is a regular contributor to TakePart who has worked for Gourmet
and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
<http://www.takepart.com/author/jason-best> full bio

 

It somehow seems oxymoronic to order a gluten-free pizza for your Super Bowl
party, akin to swapping out the buffalo wings for crudités. Nevertheless,
Pizza Hut is rolling out an  <https://order.pizzahut.com/glutenfree>
all-gluten-free pizza at about a third of its stores come Jan. 26, less than
a week before kickoff.

That Pizza Hut would debut the pie right before a major televised sporting
event (i.e., a pizza-delivery bonanza) is no surprise: Two decades ago the
chain
<http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/07/15/pizza-hut-team-stuffed-crust>
unveiled its game-changing stuffed-crust pizza just before the NCAA’s Final
Four weekend.

The 20-year gap is significant. Whereas Pizza Hut’s “revolutionary” stuffed
crust boosted the chain’s sales by $300 million, its
jump-on-the-gluten-free-bandwagon move hardly seems poised to have anywhere
near the same impact for a company
<http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/11/11/pizza-hut-rebrands> struggling
to stay on top. That hasn't kept CEO David Gibbs from claiming the new crust
will bring in the bucks, as he did in an interview with
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/01/13/pizza-hut-gluten-fr
ee-pizza-fast-food-restaurants/21643503/> USA Today, saying the purportedly
healthier pie “will get new users into the brand and existing users to visit
more frequently.”

On its face, that would seem absurd: “existing users” suggests there’s some
significant number of Americans out there who are fastidious about their
gluten intake yet, paradoxically, still visit Pizza Hut with some
regularity. Yet as Jimmy Kimmel’s
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdJFE1sp4Fw> three-and-a-half-minute riff
on the whole gluten-free fad suggests, there’s plenty of ridiculousness to
go around when it comes to gluten.

As is typical of so many “healthy” food fads, science has taken a backseat
to the hype when it comes to substantiating the benefits of skipping out on
gluten. No matter that what has passed for the “gluten sensitivity” reported
by many non-celiac patients may be linked not to gluten—a protein found in a
number of grains, including wheat, rye, and barley—but instead to a type of
carbohydrate, as
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/05/22/314287321/sensitive-to-gluten-a
-carb-in-wheat-may-be-the-real-culprit> NPR reported last spring. Food
makers have continued to flood the market with gluten-free products: 3,000
new ones from 2008 to 2010, according to market-research firm Mintel, which
also tallied sales of gluten-free products surpassing $10 billion in 2013
and predicts the market will grow to $15 billion next year.

No doubt, Pizza Hut put some serious effort into developing its new pie.
Unlike the gluten-free crust offered by competitor Domino’s, Pizza Hut’s
pizza is certified to be 100-percent gluten-free, from crust to toppings.
The chain partnered with the world’s largest manufacturer of gluten-free
foods, Udi’s, and it has implemented a strict gluten segregation policy for
the 2,400 stores that will sell the gluten-free pizza: All ingredients will
be stored in designated Gluten-Free Kits on separate shelves in the fridge,
the pies will be prepared on parchment paper, and employees must wear gloves
and use a separate “gluten-free” pizza cutter.

Of course, Pizza Hut hasn't gone through all this trouble out of a noble
desire to provide made-to-order pizza to the 1 percent of Americans who are
believed to suffer from celiac disease and must forswear gluten forever.
Like so many restaurant chains and food makers, Pizza Hut is looking to
capitalize on the widespread confusion among so many of the rest of us that
has given “gluten-free” its hazy association with “healthy”—a
misapprehension all too readily on display when the Kimmel team asked a
number of random gluten-free dieters the simple question, “What is gluten?,”
only to be met with deer-in-the-headlight stares and befuddled answers.

Thus, so much marketing buzz drowns out all appeals for reason, such as
those of two prominent celiac researchers who, back in 2012, lamented in the
<http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/21/all-hype-gluten-free-diets-may-not-he
lp-many/> Annals of Internal Medicine the proliferation of vague gluten-free
health claims “with no adequate scientific support to back them up.” As Dr.
Antonio Di Sabatino and Dr. Gino Roberto Corazza of the University of Pavia
in Pavia, Italy, wrote, “This clamor has increased and moved from the
Internet to the popular press, where gluten has become ‘the new diet
villain.’ ” 

Three years later, and Pizza Hut’s gluten-free pizza shows the clamor shows
no signs of abating.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/01/15/pizza-hut-all-gluten-free-pizza?c
mpid=tpdaily-eml-2015-01-15

 


*Support summarization of posts, reply to the SENDER not the CELIAC List*
*******
To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[log in to unmask]
*******